Recently I blinged up an ancient Standard lamp and it got me thinking about learning adult skills, I mean there’s no manual is there? The lamp was inherited from my dad, who as I understand it, made it as a teenager which would make it about seventy years old. It’s carved so carefully, he could have been an excellent carpenter but took his fathers advice and took an office job.
It has struck me that there are loads of adulty things we don’t get taught formerly. One leaves school not knowing even how to sign a cheque! Home economics taught at school, went little further than how to make cauliflower cheese and rock cakes. I learnt to balance a household budget from mum. I helped her cook which often meant little more than chucking in an extra handful of pearl barley to bulk up a stew.
Listened as she demonstrated “trussonomics” v Keynesian economics, while making a steak and kidney pie. Yes, it’s nothing new. They were talking about the damn pie in the 70’s. When I asked what’s the difference between the Tories and the Labour Party she replied. “One side say we need a bigger pie,” rolling out the sides of the pastry, pausing, holding the rolling pin above, flinging a bit more flour on top, “the other side say we need to divide the pie more fairly,” scoring in into sixths, scrunching it back into a ball and starting again, saying, “Now get me that pastry brush! “I look at her blankly. “In the top draw!”
It wasn’t like I left home with no adult skills, remember well watching dad making home brew, doing the gardening and woodwork, every move; exacting, slow and patient. Passing him the spirit level, the Phillips as requested. Feeling a sense of pride I knew the difference between screwdrivers. Dads tools were always laid out orderly like a row of soldiers. Watched him build a wall, made my self scarce when he was taking an engine apart.
One time in the first flat of my own in London I mislaid my keys and a friend admonished me with a air of despair and the words, as if it actually was in a manual for adult life, “but surely you have a place you always leave your keys?”
On reflection when we were kids keys were kept in the fruit bowl, seem to recall mother saying, “ Get my car keys!” Thinking umm, where? Casting my eyes around the room. And as if she read my mind, mother said, “Come on, we’re in a hurry, the fruit bowl!”
Yep where is the manual to adult life? And how do you cope if you have no parents to teach you the basics? Or parents that are too addled with drugs or mental health crises to cope?
I remember saying to mum and dad in my mid 30’s, in a period after I’d recovered from a severe manic episode and the meltdown that followed, “I reckon I’m grown up now; I’ve learnt to use liquid eyeliner and drink wine.” We all had a good laugh about that.
But oh so premature methinks.
The most repeated epithet was waste not want not. I remember one time standing in the front garden where dad had installed a yellow bubble car with no MOT, hence off the road. He was presently driving a second (or third) hand boxy Austin A40, teal with white wings and had picked up this three wheeler from a mate.
Out of the blue he said, “Remember, never a lender or borrower be.” Then continued. “When you’re older just remember you pay your rent first, then they can’t kick you out. Then you pay your bills next so they can’t cut you off. And if there’s nothing left go to your family they’ll feed you…”
The syntax of that expression, “borrower be” makes me wonder now how many generations that advice had passed through? From the farms of Devon to the mill towns of Yorkshire to the streets of Leytonstone to the New Town of Stevenage.
I reflect often there were no food banks in the 70’s and we didn’t go hungry but it occurs to me the whole atmosphere was one of being risk adverse and anticipating scarcity as war babies gave birth to war babies and the only evidence of the white heat of technology was dad’s mum’s stainless steel kitchen sink she was so proud of.
It strikes me our parents never really leave us. The imprints of their attitudes, values and habits—good or bad— surround us. Symbolised for me in a pastry brush and a Phillips tucked away in a kitchen drawer and an ancient Standard lamp.
That generation didn’t need to be educated to reuse, recycle, repair. Make do and mend was the motto. I figure we have much to learn from the past as we move into an uncertain future.
A blog post by Anne Enith Cooper
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